


Coming to America

by eternaleponine



Series: Ghosts That We Knew [17]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Deleted Scene, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1525457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's first few days in America.  </p>
<p>Chronologically falls prior to the start of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/531381/chapters/942536">Ghosts That We Knew</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming to America

"Welcome to America," the man who claimed to be her uncle said. She still wasn't actually sure he was telling the truth about that; surely she would have remembered having an uncle. But the truth was her parents were just faded memories, their faces gray, the edges blurry, and maybe her mother had mentioned her brother once or twice, maybe she'd met him, even, but that was a long time ago, almost her entire lifetime, and maybe he'd already been in America by then. (Although if that was the case, why was his accent so heavy? Fifteen years later, shouldn't it have faded even a little?)

But the papers he'd shown the orphanage had been good enough that they'd let her go with him, practically pushed her out the door with a backpack and a single small suitcase that held everything that she could call her own.

She'd thought about arguing once or twice, thought about saying that she didn't remember him, that she really wasn't sure about this (it hadn't felt right – it _still_ didn't feel right), but in the end, the lure of America, land of opportunity, land of possibility, land of 'Well at least it's not a Russian orphanage', had been too strong, and she'd let it happen. Let herself be led onto a plane, and watched out the window as the only world she'd ever known had disappeared from view.

And now they were here. Now her future would begin. 

She tried to stay awake, tried to take in this new place, tried to fit it with the daydreams that she and the other girls had whispered to each other sometimes, usually after seeing some movie or another that got them thinking about what life would be like anywhere but where they were. But she'd barely slept in the past few days (the close quarters of the plane and the occasional turbulence – not to mention the absolutely terrifying nature of knowing that you were trapped in a tube of metal thousands of feet above the earth's surface, dependent on god knew what to keep you up and everything completely out of your control – had kept her awake for the entire flight) and now that she had a little bit of breathing room, the motion of the car soon lulled her into sleep.

She woke up somewhere between Here and There (because New York was an movie abstract with no real place in her mental maps of the world, and Connecticut wasn't even anywhere she'd heard of) to a riot of color, leaves that should have been green instead turning gold and orange and red. Her hand was up, pressed against the window like she could reach through and touch it all, before she could think about it.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" her uncle asked, this time in Russian. 

She nodded, not looking at him. She was so intent on taking in all of the colors that she didn't even notice him reaching out, didn't realize he was touching her until his fingers were in her hair. "I think you are made to be here," he said, twisting her curls around them. "You fit right in."

Her stomach lurched, but she forced a smile because he was only trying to be nice. As carefully as she could, she shifted away so that the strands of hair slipped from his grasp. He didn't try to hold on, at least, and he leaned back in his seat, put his hand back on the wheel, and his eyes back on the road.

"How much longer?" she asked. "Until we are... there." She didn't say home. She wasn't sure yet if it was. Except wherever he was taking her would have to be home, wouldn't it? It wasn't as if she could just hop back on a plane and head back to Russia. 

"Not long," he said. "Half an hour, maybe, or a little longer. Go back to sleep."

She pulled her jacket around herself tighter, even though she wasn't cold, and crossed her arms over her chest, then leaned her head against the window, doing as he said, although not really of her own volition.

When she woke again, it was because the car had stopped. She looked around, saw a shopfront with signs – some in English, some in Russian – offering great deals on... a look in the window told her that it was mostly people's junk. Antiques, maybe they were calling them, or maybe it was some sort of pawn shop. She didn't know.

"Here we are," her uncle said. "Come upstairs and I'll show you."

He opened a door next to the one of the shop (which was closed at the moment, a sign on the window saying that it would be open again on Monday; Natasha wasn't sure what day it was anymore, with time zones and over a day spent in airports and on airplanes) and led her up a set of stairs to another door. "We'll have to have keys made for you," he said, pushing the door open. "Home sweet home."

She stepped inside cautiously, looking side to side, worried that there might be someone else here, someone waiting to surprise her... but who? She didn't know anyone here, and she didn't have any more family that her uncle had mentioned. He said that there were other Russians here, but they were friends... and friends of his, not hers. 

The place was... not exactly what she'd been expecting, but then her expectations of what it was like to live in America came from television and movies, and it was silly to think that the reality of it would be anything like the dream that they'd been sold. The place just looked... lived in, that was all. A little worn out in places, a little shabby and tattered around the edges, but it wasn't _bad_.

"You have your own room," her uncle said. "Here." He took her down a short hallway and pushed open a door. "Why don't you settle in?"

She nodded and turned slowly, taking in the room. The walls were red, and the curtains were a red check pattern that she assumed was supposed to look cheerful but it just looked sad as they drooped from the curtain rod. The parts of the fabric that were supposed to be white were dingy, and she couldn't help wondering when the last time they'd been washed was. Maybe she could wash them herself. The trim around the windows and doors was also white, but it was grimed with dust and fingerprints... another thing she would have to take care of. The paint was flaking and peeling in places, and that wasn't something she could do anything about.

The bed was narrow, but she was used to that, and at least the mattress was better than what she'd had back in the orphanage, and it didn't squeak when she sat down. The wood of the slatted headboard was scarred, deep grooves along the posts as if something had rubbed against it repeatedly. 

There was a closet, double wide, with a sliding door that she had to struggle to push open as it swung loose of its track. There were clothes hanging there, and she frowned, wondering who they belonged to. Had her uncle bought them for her? How could he have, not knowing what size she wore? Unless somehow he'd gotten that information from the orphanage, but it seemed... strange. 

She checked the dresser (also wood and rather banged up, and in a finish that didn't match the bed) and found more clothes there. Not a lot, but a few things... none of which particularly suited her, at least at first glance. She should be happy that he'd tried, though, shouldn't she? Still, she shifted the stuff she wasn't sure was hers (but who else's would it be?) to the side and put her own things away, leaving a few inches of space between the two sides for reasons she couldn't quite put a finger on. 

She was just tired, not thinking clearly, that was all, she told herself. Once she'd showered and eaten and gotten some sleep, she would start to feel better. This was her home now, after all. She had to make the best of it. 

It only took a few minutes to put all of her worldly belongings away, and when she looked around, the place still looked empty. It was strange, having her own space and nothing to occupy it. She guessed in time she would have more. Maybe she could find some pictures to hang on the walls or something, just to give the place a little life, a little character.

She went back out into the main part of the house – apartment, really, she supposed – and found the bathroom (she had to share that with her uncle) and the kitchen. "Do you cook?" he asked, coming up behind her and laying his hands on her shoulders as she opened a cabinet to check its contents. She flinched, but he didn't let go right away, just squeezed them tighter until she forced herself to relax. 

"A little," she said. "We all took turns."

"Good," he said. "I'm not much of a cook, myself. I eat at restaurants a lot, fast food, you know, but it's not good for you, and I miss the tastes of home. Maybe tomorrow you can cook me a good Russian meal." 

"What about tonight?" she asked, because she wasn't sure how many hours it had been since she'd last eaten. She'd had food on the plane, if you could call it food, but that felt like a very long time ago, and her stomach was growling. "Will we go out tonight?"

"Do you want to go out tonight?" he asked.

Natasha considered, and glanced at him, trying to find the answer in his face because in general she found that when adults asked children (and she was still a child to him, she thought, or else why would he think that she needed to be taken from Russia and brought here to be looked after?) they already knew what the right answer was, and it was up to the kid to figure out what it was and save themselves whatever trouble would come their way if they answered honestly and it turned out they were wrong.

"No," she said, because of the way his jaw was tensed and his eyes narrowed just a little. "No, I'm tired. I'd rather stay here."

"I'll order us pizza," he said. "Have you ever had pizza?"

Natasha shook her head. It was Italian, she knew, or at least allegedly it was, but it seemed like it was a rather quintessentially American thing, and that what Americans ate probably didn't bear much resemblance to what it had once been. That was how things worked, it seemed – America saw something they liked and shamelessly stole it, turning it upside down and inside out until it was almost something else entirely, and never looked back.

"I think you'll like it," he said, and pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number, speaking into it in English. She could have understood if she tried, but she didn't try. It didn't matter. He hung up a minute later and told her that it would be there in half an hour or so.

"Is it all right if I take a shower?" she asked. 

"Go ahead," he said. "There's shampoo and conditioner and everything in the shower already, some body wash I picked up that I thought you might like." He smiled at her. "If you don't, we'll get something else." 

She nodded and went to find clean clothes to change into. The sun was already sinking in the sky, but it wasn't actually all that late. She found a clean pair of jeans and a sweater rather than changing into her pajamas, thinking he might not like it if she went straight to bed after eating.

The tiled wall of the shower looked like it hadn't been cleaned in quite a while, and the bottom of the tub looked stained, discolored in a way that made her hesitant to actually put her feet on it. It looked like it wasn't just her room that needed some attention. This was what happened when men lived alone, she supposed, although she'd never understood why men were assumed to be incapable of taking care of themselves, and why they weren't expected to keep house just as much as women were. But it was apparently beneath them, to get down on their hands and knees and scrub. 

Still, she'd been in the same clothes for at least 48 hours, she was almost certain (but not entirely, because time zones had played merry havoc on her internal clock) and if she was starting to feel like she wanted to crawl out of her skin. So she adjusted the spray (and that was nice, at least – the water pressure was better than it ever had been at the orphanage, and it was hot) and climbed in under it, letting it course over her skin and trickle through her tangled curls. She closed her eyes and let it stream down her face, opening her mouth and swallowing it even though it was warm and even though she wasn't actually certain it was all right to drink. 

The scent of the body wash her uncle had gotten for her was cloyingly sweet, and she wrinkled her nose but worked it over her skin anyway, rinsing away the bubbles and hoping that the smell would go with them. The shampoo and conditioner weren't much better, but at least the liberal application of the latter allowed her to work all of the tangles and knots from her curls. 

She stayed under the water until it started to lose its heat, and then stepped out and realized she'd forgotten to bring in a towel. There was one hanging on a hook behind the door, but that was probably his, and the idea of using something that had been rubbed over god only knew what parts of his body to dry her own didn't sit well. She finally just used the not-so-clean t-shirt she'd just been wearing to soak up most of it, and put on her clean clothes over her still damp skin.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, the apartment was filled with the smell of tomatoes, meat and something else that made her stomach turn. She padded into the kitchen to see what it was, and found that the pizza was covered in cooked peppers, and the smell of them was enough to make her want to gag.

He looked at her, and when he saw her face his smile turned to a scowl. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. 

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing's wrong."

He didn't look like he believed her, but he didn't say anything more, just put a slice of the pizza on a paper plate and handed it to her. "Here," he said. "Eat."

She ate. She ate because she was hungry, and because she could sense that if she didn't he would be upset. She finished one piece, and when he offered her a second, she ate that too, even though the peppers were slimy and the smell of them permeated everything, to the point where she was pretty sure even if she'd dared pick them off, the pizza would still taste of them.

But at least she wouldn't go to bed hungry.

Once the food was gone, she wasn't sure what to do. What she _wanted_ to do was sleep, but she wasn't sure that her uncle would approve. But shouldn't he be tired, too? He'd been traveling for just as long, and he'd made the trip _to_ Russia not that long before, she assumed, so it ought to be twice as bad for him. He didn't act like he was tired, though; dinner seemed to have revived him. He got himself a drink and sat down on the couch, where he switched on the television.

After a moment's hesitation, Natasha joined him, curling up with her knees to her chest and trying to keep her eyes open as people on the screen mouthed words that she could hear, sometimes understand, but was too tired to comprehend.

She didn't realize she'd fallen asleep until he woke her, leaning close – too close – with vodka on his breath. "Go to bed," he told her. "You're tired. Go to bed."

With permission given, she unfolded herself and retreated to her room, shutting the door behind her. She looked, traced her fingers over the doorknob, but found no lock. It shouldn't have made her uncomfortable, but it did, a squirming feeling in her gut that something wasn't quite right. But that was a concern for another day, because right now, today, her pillows were calling to her. She crawled under the covers fully clothed and was asleep in seconds.

The next few days passed in a blur, with her sleeping as much as she could until her uncle started to get annoyed. When she wasn't sleeping, there was shopping to be done (some new clothes and other things necessary to get her settled in), doctor's appointments to be kept, some kind of hearing with some kind of official having to do with her immigration paperwork, and cleaning. That she mostly took up of her own volition, because although the apartment might look clean enough at first glance, she couldn't ignore the built-up grime in the corners and along the edges. It wasn't as if she had anything better to do, and it seemed to please her uncle.

She cooked him a Russian dinner, just like he'd asked, and served it to him and a few of his friends that had come over. They didn't invite her to join him, so she kept some aside in the kitchen for herself. She had to eat, after all. Her uncle was pleased by the food, and at one point when they were done eating but only just getting started drinking, he reached out and pulled her to him, his arm around her waist, his hands... too familiar. 

His fingers dug into her hip, and she knew if she tried to shift away, if she gave any hint that she didn't like what he was doing, he would get angry, so she just bit the inside of her cheek and bore it until he released her. 

_It's not anything_ , she told herself. _He's just had a little too much to drink. Men get stupid then._

But she really wished that she had a lock on her bedroom door.

After she'd been there almost a week, she started to chafe at being kept inside the four walls of the apartment except when her uncle took her out. She asked if she could go for a walk, just to see the neighborhood. He looked at her, eyes narrowed in that way he got when she did anything that gave any indication that she was anything but entirely dependent on him and compliant to his whims. "No," he said. "You might get lost."

He wasn't wrong, she discovered, when she snuck out anyway the next day. He was down in the shop, working – he didn't own the place but he was one of the few employees; he told her that she would help out there, too, once she was a bit more settled – and he'd left her to her own devices. He probably thought she would clean, but she was tired of cleaning and the only place she hadn't touched was his bedroom, anyway, and she didn't want to go in there, or maybe watch some TV. She didn't have any books to read except the few she'd brought with her, and those she'd read many times before.

Going out the front door would be problematic, because he'd locked it from the outside with a key she still didn't have, and even though she could unlock it from this side, she couldn't lock it back up again, and the stairs down from the apartment would take her too close to the shop windows. But she'd discovered that if she was careful she could actually get out her window to the fire escape, and then down the alley and away without him seeing... she hoped.

She checked the clock and made sure that it was early enough that he wouldn't be considering closing the shop (its hours weren't entirely regular) and coming upstairs to look for dinner, then slid out the window and clambered down the slightly rickety metal steps that were supposed to be there for emergencies only. She decided feeling like a captive in the land of the free was emergency enough. 

The drop from the last rung of the ladder to the ground jarred her knees, and she worried about whether she'd be able to make it back up, but she was out. She had no idea where she was going, but she was out.

And, within minutes, completely lost. It might have helped if she'd paid attention to the street signs at first, but she didn't. Half of the places that she found herself walking through weren't even really streets, just alleys between buildings that probably weren't meant to be used as walkways, per se. By the time she got to an area that was a little more open, she wasn't entirely sure how to make her way back.

It ought to have worried her, but it didn't, really. She would find her way back somehow. She knew the name of the shop, so she could always ask for that. It would be all right. So she kept walking, looking for nothing in particular except that it felt like she would know it when she saw it. Mostly, she just enjoyed the sun on her face and the cool but not cold breeze that blew. The apartment was stuffy, the air stale, and filling her lungs with fresh air felt amazing... almost intoxicating. 

And then she found the cemetery. The gates were locked, or maybe just rusted shut, but there was a gap in the fence where some of the metal rails had rusted and broken, or maybe been removed by someone else determined to get in at some point in the – from the looks of it – distant past. The grass was overgrown, the graves untended. The headstones tip-tilted in all directions, and they were old in a way that she didn't really think of America as being old. There was a shed in the middle that had once held the tools for the groundskeeper, but now it had half collapsed in on itself and held nothing but dried leaves and probably mouse nests. 

_If no one else wants this place,_ she decided, _I do._

She stayed there for a while, trying to clean up the little shelter a bit, to make it a place where she could come to get away when she got tired of being around her uncle and his friends (who looked at her like she was not only fifteen, unless they just didn't care) and their too loud voices and their alcohol tainted breath and bad teeth, and hands that were sometimes a little too friendly as they welcomed her (over and over again) to America.

She didn't have a watch, or even a phone (although her uncle said he would get her one soon, but what did she need one for when she was always with him?), so she didn't know what time it was or how long she'd been there. Hopefully not too long; the sun hadn't shifted so far in the sky that she thought it might be getting close to dinner time. She stooped to exit the way she'd come, and found her way back to the street.

As she walked, she noticed that there were a lot of kids around, kids her own age, some walking alone but most of them in groups, meandering down the sidewalks and talking over each other, sometimes pushing and shoving and laughing about it. A few complained about teachers and homework... and only then did she realize that they were heading home from school.

School was in session, and she wasn't there. Shouldn't she be there?

She made the things that she knew her uncle liked for dinner (she only had to scramble a little to get it ready on time; finding her way home had taken rather longer than it should have), and was glad when it was only him there that night. It meant she actually got to sit down with him to eat, and even though she'd found that she didn't necessarily _like_ his undivided attention, for this it was useful. 

"When I am going to school?" she asked, in English. They spoke Russian in the apartment, him and all his friends, but somehow it seemed important to demonstrate to him that she did, in fact, speak the language of the country she was in. Not perfectly, maybe not even entirely fluently, but she'd had top grades in their English classes back in Russia. 

He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. "School? You don't need to go to school," he answered in Russian.

"I do," she said, switching back over. "It's required, isn't it? The law says that children have to go to school." She was pretty sure that was the law, anyway. She hadn't had any way to verify it, but she was pretty sure it was true. 

"Once you're sixteen you don't need to go," he said. "So you don't need to go."

"I'm not sixteen," she said. "I'm fifteen."

"No," he said, setting his jaw. "No, it says on your papers—" He pushed himself away from the table and went to the desk where he'd locked up all of the paperwork that he needed for dealing with making sure that she was in the country legally, including her passport. He pulled it out, flipping through, and swore. 

"Monday," he said. "The week is almost over. On Monday I will take you to the school and we will see."

He looked like he hated her for it, and although she thought maybe she'd won the battle (she couldn't be sure until Monday, until she was actually in the school), the war was far from over.

**Author's Note:**

> For Rachel and Rachelspartan, who both requested this (but might be the same person).


End file.
